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Mother of the Year

This Mothers’ Day I nominate Trevor as mother-of-the-year. Trevor is Tabby’s Silkie hen who has gone broody. How can you tell a chicken has gone broody?

She bummed six fertile eggs off of me and plopped Trevor down on them. 21 or so days later she managed to hatch five of them and is still holding out for six.

She has one white, two solid black and one splash, the fifth one died shortly after hatching.

Not bad given that I put ten eggs in an incubator and only got two chicks.

Our eggs

Scratchy’s classroom

Making a teaching moment

This video is especially sweet given how high pitched Tabby’s voice is.

While her chicks are cared for under the wing of Trevor, mine are in my bathroom under a heat lamp. Nature wins over technology.

Fleur and Babette

I’m not going to write a depressing blog about Mother’s Day because frankly, I’ve done it many times and it’s gotten old.

Yet I am still trying to figure out what exactly will make me happy on Mother’s Day, a holiday fraught with personal baggage.

I don’t want stuff, I don’t want to go out to brunch at a packed restaurant, I don’t want flowers and candy, so what do I want?

I want to be acknowledged for the things I do as mother, and for that one day don’t want to do any of those things. I want a quiet day to reflect on my journey.

That means no meal prep, no grocery shopping, no cleaning, no scheduling, no driving.

We got off to a bumpy start this morning but I got my wishes across to Loony and it’s been good since. Now I must remember this for next year and give him a reminder. He’s not that great at coming up with stuff on his own but he is pretty good at following instructions.

The rest of the day has been spent cutting the crap.

But first I should catch you up. This weekend started off with a very fun but exhausting happy hour.

Just kidding!

About the exercise part. That does not look like a happy hour to me. I’m more like this …

It was the usual deal, start early and end early because come 7:00, the kids get tired of chasing each other around the neighborhood and want to come inside the house. No can do.

I think there were about 40 people, kids included.

The best part was when Leah showed up with a basket full of kittens for us to play with.

I was wiped out when everyone cleared out around 7:30.

God, I’m getting so old.

But it’s been a hectic week and socializing isn’t really what’s on my mind. You’d think I had a baby on the way or something given my manic project oriented state of mind.

I’M NOT PREGNANT!

I’m still tying up the loose ends with all the house projects. I had guys in the house all week installing windows and doing touch up work.

Good morning!

Not done yet

That’s my bedroom

I’ve had bad luck in the past with getting stuff done. I live in a constant state of anxiety as to whether they will actually show up and finish the job. These guys were great.

It’s all good stuff but it makes things hectic and there is a lack of privacy that comes with the territory. It’s just how it goes.

The other problem with fixing things up is that it makes everything else look crappy. As much as I love my shiny new chandelier, it puts a fine point on how filthy the other ones are in my house. So I decided to clean my chandeliers … one crystal at a time.

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I did all this while binging on podcasts. I don’t know what I’d do without 2 Dope Queens. I worked on the crystals out on the porch so I could keep an eye on my hens who were getting some free range time.

I wanted to make sure Bates didn’t get any ideas about them. I have been making a point of letting the girls out daily because the other day a woman walked by the Poulet Rouge and muttered a shitty comment about my chickens needing more space.

My Parasitic Twin was with me when it happened and she was ready to kill that lady.

“Where’d you get that sweater set, bitch? Bangladesh? I bet.”

I try to not let it get to me and find something constructive to do with the negativity, like clean my chandelier while babysitting my chickens.

So today for Mothers’ Day I spent the day on my butt, deleting photos.

This might not sound like fun to you but it feels so good! I had 45,000 photos (as in forty five THOUSAND) on the cloud and I’m not upping my subscription to iCloud to make room for a bunch of shitty photos.

I used to be good about editing pictures each month and organizing them but the new iPhoto is so dispiriting that I kind of fell out of the habit. Since I easily take ten photos for every keeper, I figured I just needed to devote some time to it.

My helper

Now I’m down to 25 thousand pictures and counting. I got rid of 20 shoeboxes worth of photos my friends. Granted, they are virtual but you have to quantify things somehow.

I’m culling out duplicates, misfires, pictures that are practically identical to each other but at the time I couldn’t part with, pictures of other people’s kids (I mail the good ones to them before I delete them), random landscapes that hold no meaning, ALL the pictures of the crap I’ve gotten rid of, etc.

As Nina astutely pointed out, I have copies of all my blog photos on my blog so I don’t need them on the cloud. So today has been a nice trip down memory lane and it being Mothers’ Day, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my journey as a mother and the people who have been there for me.

It has been very sweet.

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Happy Mothers’s Day to anyone who has ever cared for another being, whether you are a man or a woman, whether it is your child, someone else’s child, a friend or a fur baby.

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7 thoughts on “Mother of the Year”

Happy Mother’s Day to you. I have a lot of respect for the way that you bring up those boys. From a non-parent’s point of view I don’t know shit about the stresses of having children. The only thing that I can offer is that I get to watch a lot of children from a different viewpoint; I’m not comparing their behaviour to that of my own kids.

What I especially notice, is that you have kids, and you love your kids to death, but you also have a life and room to love other people too. I think that must be good for them and you.

Well, it’s good for me and I hope it will eventually be good for them to have parents who have a balance of home and personal lives. Ultimately I have to brace myself for the inevitable period where I will be blamed for all their problems and where they will level their rebellion and frustration at me. We all do it. I just want them to grow up strong, capable and independent. I hope that having a close and mutually loving relationship is also possible, but first and foremost, I want them to be okay on their own.

It sounds like you had a nice Mother’s Day. I think you have a great balance of loving your boys and having a life outside of them. You are real and honest with them and they are lucky. Side note…….I have never blamed either of my parents for anything. I learned at an early age to take responsibility for my own behavior. I think your boys are going to be the kind of men that woman(anyone)would love to be with. Honest,real,and of course funny. 🙂 Your relationship with them reminds me of my sister CJ’s kids. Her kids (4 of them)are 16yrs-23 and have always been a joy to be around.

I think the blaming thing comes from therapy. People want to get to the bottom of their problems rather than being pragmatic about it and just changing the behavior they don’t like. I’ve always liked how down-to-earth you are.

Thanks. “Down-to-earth”…..my mom calls me her “earthy” child. 🙂 Interesting about the blaming thing. A couple of my sisters like to do the “blame game” not necessarily about either of my parents but about an altercation. Then I feel the need to say, “Why does anyone have to take the blame? Clearly it was just a miscommunication!” 🙂 Which of course annoys them. hahah